Facing the Challenges

MARY JANE KREBBS, PH.D.ASSOCIATE DEAN

ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY

edTPA:Impact on Teaching and Learning

in a Common Core World

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Backdrop

A learning goal or standard is only as good as the instructor’s ability to imagine what it would look like when it is being met.

Sarah Fine

Education Week 10/28/10

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Backdrop

We need to fix our schools to teach “entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity” so students can emulate the “new untouchables” in our workforce today.

Thomas FriedmanNew York Times, Oct. 2009

Today’s students will need such tools (of creativity) to tackle the problems they stand to inherit…Knowledge will need to be combined across disciplines, and juxtaposed in unorthodox ways.

Creativity: A Cure for the Common CoreDan BerrettThe Chronicle of Higher EdApril 5, 2013

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Have as your mantra: Explicit literacy instruction is now a shared responsibility of all teachers throughout a school.

Ross WienerTeaching to the Core CCSSO and the Aspen InstituteMarch 2013

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Content mastery is not sufficient. We should view content acquisition as a means to an end, not an end in itself. If students do not have numerous opportunities to use content knowledge to solve interesting problems, grapple with key questions and issues of the discipline, and examine sound issues, they will be unlikely to perform well on the common assessments.

David Coleman Building on the Common Core Educational Leadership, March 2011

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School of Education Challenges

Prepare faculty, students, supervisors for the edTPA certification process

Understand the Common CoreAlign Common Core, edTPA and our

programs with the task promptsAlign edTPA with our accreditation agency -

TEAC

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Curriculum Components

Content: knowledge/skills/understandings depth over breadth ability to transfer interdisciplinary learning goal – it has to be about something writing, writing, writing

Task I the intended teaching

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Curriculum Components

Instruction: “heartbeat” of Common Core use knowledge to… non-routine (cf: brain theory) creativity intrinsically motivated writing, writing, writing

Task II the enacted teaching

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Curriculum Components

Assessment: integral – not intrusive “imagine what it looks like when being met” evidence of understanding Backward Design formative and summative writing, writing, writing

Task III impact on student learning which informs further

planning

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Sample Prompts

Describe how your planned formal and informal assessments will provide direct evidence that students can use the literacy strategy and requisite skills to comprehend or compose text throughout the learning segment.

Explain how you elicited student responses to promote thinking…

Use evidence from 3 student work samples and the whole class summary to analyze the patterns of learning for the whole class and differences for groups or individual learners…

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Our students have to learn how to do this by our teaching them and by our modeling these

components in our planning, teaching and assessing

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NJDOE 12

What do these claims look like?

Are teachers giving content area reading materials (Scientific texts, Historical texts, Art texts, Math texts) greater focus?

Is academic vocabulary front and center in every subject and every grade?

Is the teacher asking text-dependent questions? Are the questions posed by the teacher worth answering? Is the teacher facilitating evidence–based discussion and

leading the students to draw from that evidence in their writing?

Are all students actively participating? Is appropriate scaffolding given to raise the bar for all? Is the teacher providing immediate effective feedback?

Adapted: Danielson & Marzano

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Overview of Standards for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

Reading Standards for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects knowledge of domain-specific vocabulary analyze, evaluate, and differentiate primary and secondary sources synthesize quantitative and technical information, including facts

presented in maps, timelines, flowcharts, or diagrams

Writing Standards for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects write arguments on discipline-specific content and

informative/explanatory texts use of data, evidence, and reason to support arguments and claims use of domain-specific vocabulary

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NJDOE 15

What do these claims look like?

Is the teacher developing the students’ capacity to make sense of a multi-step problem and persevere in solving it?

Do students understand the relationship between a real-world scenario, its mathematical representation and the strategy needed to solve it?

Is academic vocabulary front and center? Can the students engage in a mathematical discourse? Can

they express mathematical reasoning? Is the teacher developing the students’ capacity to use

appropriate tools and to focus on precision? Are assignments coherently designed; are math exercises

given in intentional sequences? Do assignments contain different types of problems that are

presented in a simple to complex format?adapted: www.engageny.org 16

Coupling practice with content gives the learning context, whereas practices alone are activities, and content alone is memorization…

The integration of rigorous content and application reflects how science and engineering is practiced in the real world

Executive SummaryNew Generation Science Standards

Facing the Challenges

1. Aspects of edTPACoordinating Committee

course/Program Design Sub-committee communication/Training Sub-committee infrastructure Sub-committee edTPA/TEAC rubric alignment Sub-committee

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Facing the Challenges

2. Gap AnalysisThe Common Core State Standards are integrated

throughout every course the way knowledge is learned and transferred reflections on learning assessing student work

Instituted a new writing course: Writing for Educators co-taught by a content person and a literacy person same or different department

Created a course, Educational Theory To Practice, taken with student teaching to assist students in the kind of reflection necessary for the effective cycle of teaching (intended; enacted; impact on student learning)

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Facing the Challenges

Assessment mantra: students are only limited by what it is we ask of them as proof that they know it. integrated into every course Backward Design looking at student work as a means toward student

achievement, curriculum alteration and “learning more about what students know and can do and what they think” (Darling-Hammond and Falk, p. 6)

thinking outside the box in designing assessment protocolsFaculty Retreat: Where can the learning take place

in preparation for the assessment of effective teaching (edTPA)

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Facing the Challenges

3. TrainingFull Faculty Council: November 12, 2012

(Beverly Falk) and March 4, 2013 (in-house team of faculty)

All Adjunct faculty in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction

All Supervisors for student teachers

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Facing the Challenges

4. Train the Trainer Professional Development

Design Committee comprised of representatives from administration, faculty, adjuncts and supervisors from 2 campuses

Two-day design process in August 2013

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Facing the Challenges

5. edTPA Teaching Modules (2 hours each; offered at night and on Saturday)

Academic LanguageInstructionAssessmentMathematics

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